Cultural shocks at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”

On occasion of the annual conference on intercultural pedagogy organised by the intercultural training organisation Fondazione InterCammini at the University “La Sapienza” in Rome, on April 13th, the Italian partner CESIE was invited to present the Healthy Diversity project and to share its experience with the Critical Incidents methodology through a lecture and a workshop on the methodology (Programme – ita only).

In fact, besides the Healthy Diversity project, CESIE and other partners had previously had the chance to work on the cultural shock methodology through the projects BODY (Culture, body, gender and sexuality in adult training) and BODI (Cultural diversity, body, gender, health in early childhood education). Such experiences have indeed represented a unique chance to explore and work at the local level on important and controversial themes.

During the decentration workshop with images, participants were guided through the exploration of the feelings associated to different images, reflecting also on the values and the systems of values behind the elicited emotions. Cultural shocks, in fact, generally occur around “sensitive zones”, i.e. domains which are particularly important in the cultural framework of an individual, and they are also associated to emotional reactions, which can be either positive or negative.

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